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Microsoft XUI concept video series finale “Play”

The third and finale concept video in the Microsoft XUI series, “Play”, has now been officially published online by Invivia, the makers of the video. In contrast to the previous “Home” and “Work” videos released over a year ago, it is by far the most bizarre and incoherent of them all.

Although August de los Reyes screened this during his NUI session at TechEd Australia 2010 last week, I thought by looking at it a second time in full fidelity I would have a better understanding of what the hell is going on. That’s not the case.

Fortunately there is an official description that gives some insight into its intended effect.

The XUI series is a poetic exploration of how technology might invisibly integrate into our daily lives.

XUI Play, the third video, is a hyper-real portrayal of a dinner party where differing points-of-view create a complex array of conflicting interactions. The physical constraints of dining at a table can hold together conflicting opinions and desires inside of a singular activity. We are using this metaphor of a dinner party as an analog for collaborative computing. This video also investigates the cause and effect of small gestural interactions on an urban scale via the digital cloud. Here, analog devices behave in extraordinary ways with the hidden aid of technology.

Riiiiiight.

Written by Long Zheng on September 1st, 2010 with no comments.
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See it, hear it, touch it: HP adds new 3D, Beats Audio, and Touch laptops to its lineup

Technology moves at an unrelenting sprint, and HP is keeping pace with the introduction of several new laptops that take advantage of cutting-edge features like 3D, multi-touch, and their signature "Beats Audio” sound setup.

On the netbook front, HP introduced a new member to its venerable Mini 210 lineup (the Vivienne Tam – which I love – is part of this line) with new optional HD screens, optional GPS, and the option to power up with the Intel’s new Atom N550 processor.  It’s in a slick new chassis that’s less than an inch thick and weighs just a hair over 3lbs, and you can get one starting at $329.  HP also introduced the Mini 5103, which is HP’s first mini-notebook with a multi-touch screen.  It comes in a beautiful all-metal “espresso” colored case, and its available today starting at $399.  I’m really looking forward to getting a Mini 5103 so I can try out multi-touch.  Overall, HP does a great job with touch – just look at the wildly successful TouchSmart line – and I’m excited to see how they miniaturized the experience for the Mini 5103’s 10.1” screen.

HP Mini 210%2c all colors in pinwheel composition

The shiny new Mini 210s

Want something bigger?  HP’s got you covered.  Today they announced the ENVY 17 3D, the first 17” laptop in the world to pump out 3D graphics on a 1080p display.  I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds amazing!  Couple that with monster specs, like an available ATI Radeon 5850 DirectX 11 GPU, 2 terrabytes of storage, an Intel Core i7 processor, and ATI Eyefinity to support multiple external displays, and the ENVY 17 3D is shaping up to be one of the baddest boxes on the market. 

ENVY 17 3D_with_3D_Glasses__FrontLeft_Open

HP rounds out today’s announcement with the ENVY 14 Beats Edition. This is a special edition of the standard ENVY 14 that’s packed with Beats Audio, which HP touts as “A unique, high-performance technology developed by HP and Beats by Dr. Dre™ to provide the optimal sound experience – the way the artist intended it – when playing music or audio through headphones or external speakers.”  I just got one of these laptops into my office and I’ve been playing with Beats Audio and the Beats Audio Solo noise-cancelling headphones and I can attest to how incredible its makes music sound.  Bass is deep, mids are solid, and highs are crisp and clear.  It’s an impressive combo and something that I highly recommend to music lovers.  I’ll be reviewing the ENVY 14 in more depth in the next week or so, so keep an eye out.

HP ENVY 14 Beats Edition%2c rear left open

It’s always nice to see a leading PC company like HP staying ahead of the game by making cutting-edge technology available in mainstream laptops.  Hopefully we’ll see more PCs with technologies like this coming soon.   Speaking of what’s next – what do you think is the next big thing in PC tech? 

Have a question about this or any other PC?  Post a comment, hit me on Twitter or Ask Ben Anything via email.  Your question might appear in my monthly Ask Ben Anything Q&A column.

Written by Ben Rudolph on September 1st, 2010 with no comments.
Read more articles on HP ENVY 14 and Beats by Dre and ATI Radeon Mobility 5850 and Mini 5103 and HP TouchSmart and HP ENVY 17 and HP ENVY 17 3D and ATI Eyefinity and Vivienne Tam and Mini 210 and touchsmart and atom and otherSoftware and Intel Atom and Intel Core i7 and Beats Audio and HP ENVY and HP.

Double rainbows in Redmond

…as I said, “more to come”.

You may have heard of the Double Rainbow Video. The guy who filmed this, Paul “Bear” Vasquez, lives in Yosemite and in the past month has gotten huge traffic for his ‘vivid’ reaction to that double rainbow. We hooked up with Bear to learn more about him & show him how to capture a full on double rainbow with Windows Live Photo Gallery using our panorama stitch feature. It’s so intense!

Some more background…

When I first showed the Windows Live team the famous “Double Rainbow” video back in July they thought it was hilarious. But when I said I wanted him to come and do a video with us, they looked at me as if I had been seeing rainbows all day…they thought I was kidding. I e-mailed Bear that night and sure enough, he responded, and with great enthusiasm.

I called him and gave him the lowdown on the project and asked if he would do a “Double Rainbow” redux. He was ecstatic! So we jumped right on it. He flew to Seattle and we had an absolute blast. After a 10 hour shoot we shared stories, ate delicious Vietnamese food (his favorite), and hung out with the crew.

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Photo Caption: Bear and our crew. From left to right: Connor Lanman, Max Lanman, Adam Collins, Matt Garrett, Bear, Austin Chick, Michael Fishman, Andrew Sobey, & Shawn Anderson not pictured: Tommy Yacoe & Brendan Schlagel

We did a second video called “Meet Bear” where talks about his experience posting “Double Rainbow” and his love for sharing photos and videos with the world using Windows Live Essentials – video coming soon (will update post when its up). UPDATE: You can check out the second video called “Meet Bear” by clicking here!

Bear is something special. He’s entered the world of social media in hopes to share laughs, smiles, and insights. It’s not about the product, it’s about the people. It’s about the viewers, the users, it’s about you. And more importantly this project also shows how powerful sharing photos and videos can be. If tools like Photo Gallery and Movie Maker didn’t exist, Bear and I wouldn’t have met.

People can now share their lives with everyone and anyone, and can influence each other’s lives in a positive way. That’s what is so cool about Bear’s story.

Till next time,

-Connor

Written by Connor Lanman on September 1st, 2010 with no comments.
Read more articles on Viral and Intern and Panoramic Stitch and Bear and Double Rainbow and Student and Consumer and Windows Live Photo Gallery and otherSoftware and Windows Live Essentials and Viral Video and Windows Live.

MaxCDN – Increase Revenue And Pageviews While Decreasing Bounce Rate

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I was somewhat skeptical of CDN (Content Delivery Network) services such as Cachefly, MaxCDN and AmazonCloud. They are not exactly cheap, except for MaxCDN with a price tag of $39 per month. It was then that I decided to give CDN a try and I have to admit that the speed is amazing, a quick check with Pingdom’s Full Page Test shows an increase of 1 to 2 seconds in total loading time.

MaxCDN - Increase Revenue And Pageviews While Decreasing Bounce Rate

You may be wondering the difference it makes if a page loads by 1 second. Well, according to Google, Yahoo and Amazon. Speed is among the most significant success factors web sites face. In fact, your site’s speed directly affects your income (revenue) — it’s a fact. Some high traffic sites conducted research and uncovered the following:

  • Google.com: +500 ms (speed decrease) -> -20% traffic loss [1]
  • Yahoo.com: +400 ms (speed decrease) -> -5-9% full-page traffic loss (visitor left before the page finished loading) [2]
  • Amazon.com: +100 ms (speed decrease) -> -1% sales loss [1]

From my own experience, there is an increase in pageviews and revenue, not so much in new traffic because it takes a few months for Google to update their database. All in all, I have no regrets subscribing to a CDN, the only regret I had was not to take part in this CDN thing earlier. Here are the summary:

  • Revenue increased
  • Bounce rate dropped
  • Pageviews increased
  • Faster loading time

Currently I am using MaxCDN, based on the speed test from Cloud Harmony, AmazonCloud is the fastest but the setup is kind of confusing, so was CacheFly. MaxCDN uses Pull Zone instead of Push Zone like CacheFly and Amazon, therefore with a simple WordPress plugin such as W3 Total Cache, everything sorted out by the plugin with minor editing.

Depending on your Budget, you might want to try Amazon. Good Luck.

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Written by GeckoFly on September 1st, 2010 with no comments.
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Configuring Services with the GUI

Managing services by hand can be time-consuming. Ubuntu includes an easy applet for enabling and disabling some system services: System -> Administration -> Services Enabling or disabling services only requires changing a check box.

Checking or unchecking a service will immediately change the service’s current running status. It will also alter the service’s boot status. This way, if you uncheck a service, you don’t need to manually stop any running processes and it will not start at the next boot. Checking a service starts it immediately and schedules it to start with the each reboot.

Although this tool does identify some of the better-known services, it does not list custom services and does not identify different runlevels. Since Ubuntu normally runs at runlevel 2, you are only modifying services that start during runlevel 2. In order to control more of the boot options, you either need to modify the files in the /etc/init.d and /etc/rc*.d directories, or you need a better tool, like bum or sysv-rc-conf.

The Services applet was removed from Karmic Koala (9.10). To configure startup services, either use the command line or install bum.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Powerful Hacks And Customizations

Written by magakos on September 1st, 2010 with no comments.
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And Adobe wonders why we hate them…

Adobe AIR - This application is running on a version of Adobe AIR which is no longer supported.

Written by Rafael on September 1st, 2010 with no comments.
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